11-28 March 08

The past few weeks have been very.... interesting.

Dave went back to the uk to catch up with a few things so I have been concentrating on pruning and watering. No really, I have been working at the land, just didn't think photographs of me watering a tree would be that interesting to you!

Anyway, Dave came back on Tuesday. As the land is half way between us and the airport we decided to do some watering on the way home. Dave was really excited to get back and see how things had been doing. We eagerly drove down the dirt track and round the corner nearing our land where we came across a huge mound of earth in the road stopping us going any further!

In fact there wasn't just one, there were seven as we found out when we started to walk the road. As we got nearer to our land we started to panic - what if the council had decided to take our permission away from us and had blocked our access too? What if they'd knocked down what we'd built so far? As the panic rose our steps quickened.

When we saw the earthship still standing and no signs of disruption we breathed a huge sigh of relief. So, what was going on with the road?

Dave spoke to the planning officer at the council who didn't know anything about it. He also spoke to the solicitor who dealt with the purchase of the land, she confirmed that we have right of access. So we can only presume that the land owner of that section of road has had a brainstorm. We've left a note for him to call us and in the mean time have lowered some of the bumps so we can get the car through.

On the subject of planning we've had a reply from the Provincial Council who have initially turned down our request for the land usage change - sob. We've been trying to get hold of the local planning officer to discuss this as we think they may not have received the full proposal - some of the questions they're asking have already been supplied. We can't get hold of him so it looks like we're going to have to make a trip over there.

Help!!

As you can see the satsuma tree is suffering. We've been watering it once a week when we go to the land, we've mulched the soil around it and have pruned it to reduce the amount of top stuff it needs to sustain. And it's still struggling. Does anyone have any suggestions on what we can do to help it? I had wondered about painting it's trunk white to reflect the sun but I'm not sure what type of paint to use - any ideas please?

Famous again.....

Last month La Voz de Almeria, this month Costa Almeria News, what next?!

Jackie Bragg from Costa Almeria News came to visit us at the land on Tuesday to do an interview for her newspaper. Thank you Jackie for taking the time to increase awareness of environmentally friendly building. Let's hope it drums up more interest for it in this area.

Back to the roof

At last we've finished the bond beam on the east wall of the main hut area, well sort of. Dave has started chiselling away at the round beams to flatten off their bottoms where they sit on the bond beam and centre beam. I've started painting them with the wood treatment - so it's all go again.